News

Lesson 1 - kimichista

Pronouncing Eurasian - Consonants, Vowels, Stress

From the perspective of a native English speaker, the phonology and consonant and vowel inventory of Eurasian definately seems very straight forward.

Consonants

Eurasian has a total of 23 consonants. The chart below introduces them and provides a guide to their pronunciation that relates an English sound.

Consonant

Pronunciation Guide

Example word

m

mother

myom (m, heart)

n

night

nestas (n, to join)

ng

king

ngo (m, ground, earth)

p

pass

pul (n, nine)

b

bait

bas (f, nature)

t

toast

tep (f, book)

d

dog

dom (from)

k

cat

kantas (n, to greet)

g

gate

gral (f, peace)

ts

cats

tsik (you, singular)

dz

No English equivalent. It is the voiced version of 'ts', like a 'd' and 'z' pronounced together.

ch

approximately church, but with the tounge raised more.

chach (f, kitchen)

dzh

approximately John, but with the tounge raised more.

dzhan (f, health, wellbeing)

s

song

sab (n, to like, enjoy, remember)

z

zebra

zan (m, head)

sh

approximately shake, but with the tounge raised more.

shizi (f, straight)

zh

approximately vision, but with the tounge raise more.

zhas (f, system)

h

similar to the English h, but like the Scottish 'loch'.

hats (n, to cut, graze)

l

similar to the English l, but with the tounge raised and breathy.

lwa (n, to lack, be without, un-, -less)

lz

the voiced version of 'l'.

r

The alveolar trill or 'rolled R' used in many languages.

rod (n, to join, include)

y

yonder

yom (n, to pass, bypass)

w

wasp

war (n, to build, construct)

Selected Consonants

sh, zh, ch, dzh

These four consonants are the palatal sibilants and affricates. English does not have these sounds, but they are similar to the alveolo-palatal sibilants and affricates that English does have. The palatal versions of Englishes alvolo-palatal consonants can be formed by advancing the tip of the tounge upwards. Additionally, 'sh', 'ch' and 'dzh' correspond to the Chinese 'x', 'q' and 'j' respectively.

'r'

The Eurasian 'r' is an alveolar trill or 'rolled R' used in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian and many other languages. If the speaker has difficulties saying this sound, he may substitute the alveolar tap, similar to the 'tt' in (American English) butter. This is also done when the speaker is speaking too fast for the full trill to be heard.

'h'

The Eurasian 'h' is a voiceless velar fricative, which does not have an English equivalent. This is the sound used in the Scottish 'loch', and is also equivalent to the 'h' in Russian, Chinese, and several other languages.

'l' and 'lz'

The Eurasian 'l' and 'lz' are the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative and the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative respectively. They are similar to the English 'l' sound, but with the tounge more raised and very breathy.

Vowels

Eurasian has five vowels, though depending on things like stress, some vowels may be realized differently.

a

father

kag (n, thing)

e

bed

seskas (n, to curse, damn, denounce)

i

feet

kim (n, ten)

o

coat

gyo (m, body)

u

boot

dyut (n, to read)

Stress

Stress in Eurasian refers to the amount of emphasis placed on each syllable in a word. A stressed syllable will receive a lot of emphasis while an unstressed syllable will receive little emphasis. Each word has exactly one stressed syllable. As for which syllable gets the stress, the patterns may at first seem somewhat upredictable, but are almost always determined by the simple rule: the stressed syllable is the first syllable of the last piece of lexical information. 'Lexical information' refers to the parts of words that actually carry the word's meaning.

Stress can also cause the pronunciation of some vowels to change.

An 'a' found on the stressed syllable or before it is pronounced normally (father)

An 'a' found on a syllable after the stressed syllable is pronounced like the u in English fun.

An 'e' found on a syllable before or after the stressed syllable is pronounced normally (bed)

An 'e' found on the stressed syllable is a palatalized 'e', written as 'je', sounds like 'ye'.

Exercises

Say aloud the following Eurasian words. The apostrophe is placed after the stressed syllable.